Rebranding from Bryology to Still Building and what to expect
First, a Thank you
If you received this in your inbox in early October it means you were a loyal and cherished subscriber to what this newsletter once was and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.
I initially launched bryology.substack.com as a newsletter where I dumped my thoughts on investing in US based equities, real estate, cryptocurrency, and tech. Many of you enjoyed the content and for that I am eternally grateful.
It was a much needed hobby/side project of mine during the height of the pandemic (summer of 2020) and a very dramatic election year. The Fed was running wild with money printing and a bull market was in full swing. Everyone was stuck inside and watching the news way too close. This was one of the few things keeping me mentally sane during that time period.
I had written reviews on S-1s, 10-Ks, provided some frameworks for cryptocurrency valuations and spoke about trends in the intersection of social media and technology. I’ve published 30 or so posts in that timespan and am glad to have had that experience as it has made me a much better writer and thinker.
Why I’m rebranding to Still Building
Towards the middle of 2021 I landed a job in cryptocurrency/Web3 which has been a goal of mine since I initially started investing in 2017 and fell in love with the technology and community. This job has provided me the opportunity to work with large brands and help them build new consumer experiences based on Web3 technology. As I helped these brands launch their products, I became fascinated by how many people were willing to adopt this technology so I decided to start buying and collecting NFTs.
My initial foray into NFTs came with extreme price swings. NFT projects started multiplying in value over the course of just days or weeks during the second half of 2021. Many early adopters were minted into millionaires and I doubt they even expected it to happen so fast.
As 2022 swung around we saw a catastrophic market collapse in the overall macro economy and risk assets (NFTs being one of the riskiest) have taken the heaviest hit. Trading volume on the largest NFT marketplace is down ~85% in Ethereum denominations and 93% in USD denominations.
There are multiple reasons for this. But before we get into the weeds, let’s take a step back and think about how NFTs are viewed and a framework of how one can think about it in a space where people have applied a ton of different definitions to this “asset class”.
At a foundational level an NFT is a token sitting on a blockchain.
It has an ID that will be permanent forever thanks to blockchain technology, thus making it easily verifiable and it is bundled with data that represents something that the creator has published to that token. There are a ton of marketplaces that exist that virtually allows for anyone to trade this token for a cryptocurrency that is pegged to real money.
This data attached to the token that represents something is completely up to the creator and can literally be anything. It is up to the creator (and the community/market) to convince people that it is actually worth value and will either maintain its value or grow its value over time.
We’ve seen a few use cases so far like art, tickets, membership access, gaming characters, and more. Because the ID of the token is permanent and can easily be transfered between two parties, anyone can independently verify who owns what asset and permissionlessly give perks and benefits to the holder while the holder can be completely anonymous in real life.
Many of these token creators are project teams that do some initial fundraising in exchange for a token (minting) with promises to early supporters that they will be receiving some kind of benefit from the project in the future.
This model is very similar to kickstarter where people who want to launch products or projects do initial fundraising to fund development of said project/product and then later release it to backers. With NFTs you get a token in return that represents verified ownership of the “initial project backing” that you can sell to others if you no longer want to participate in that project’s future and this can all be done anonymously both on the token creation and investing side. Unlike kickstarter which has a fundraising goal and the ability to exceed that fundraising goal and get as many backers as possible, NFT projects release a certain amount of tokens at a price per token that represents their fundraising goal.
If a project is promoted very well, has good execution of deliverables, or a very valuable gated community and there are only a limited number of tokens, there creates a very unique demand vs supply dynamic that has frequently caused the prices to spike, therefore rewarding early believers that may then sell their initial investment for a gain to someone else who wants to get in. The inverse can happen where a project is promoted poorly and does not execute well or the community is non performant, there will be a shrinkage of demand and an excess of supply causing prices to crash.
That is the NFT market in a nutshell.
Our thesis at this publication is that while the market has taken a collective nose dive and a majority of projects have quit and wasted investor funds, there are still a lot of worthy projects that have been released in the past 18 months that have been delivering value to their brand or community.
These projects are deserving of being re-examined and highlighted while current social media surrounding NFT investments are focused more on minting and new project launches. Those projects will end up with much higher probabilities of restoring and growing the value of their community and brand and therefore their token.
What to expect from this publication
Our publication will be launched with two people. Myself, who will go by Bry (from bryology) and n00ble.
We’re going to be doing weekly releases of existing NFT project breakdowns that have been in the space for at least 6 months and are still building, get it?
Things we are looking to highlight include the investor/community member experience, aka what is the experience that I am getting as an investor or community member when I purchase this NFT?
We also will be adding an unrefined opinion of every project that we examine and publish, none of which is meant to be taken as financial advice.
The goal at stillbuilding is to be a first of its kind publication that can re-excite NFT loyalists and restore their faith in existing long term projects as well as offer new entrants into the space with a safer and well researched project for them to get their feet wet.
Super excited for whats to come and stay tuned for Issue #1 to be released very soon❤️